Originally published in SSRN on 8 May 2020

The pandemic COVID-19 has slowed down human activities globally and throwing countries into a slump and possibly economic depression. Bangladesh, a growing economy, is also experiencing severe economic shockwaves. Besides the economic shock, it is also facing an imbalance in the food supply in all of its channels. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general understanding of the possible impacts of COVID-19 on food supply in Bangladesh. The paper presents a brief summary of the global COVID-19 situation, food supply, and nutritional and current food supply status in relation to COVID-19. In Bangladesh, the trend of COVID-19 cases is increasing and due to the lockdown situation, the food supply is hampering badly. Since most farmers are not adapted to mechanized agriculture and facing a labour shortage, their production has fallen into risk in terms of harvesting. Due to buyer shortage and unavailability of supply channels, products are being forced to sell at a low price and it will take years of time to overcome this shock as the prognosis of COVID-19 is still unknown to all. Though the government has taken some policy measures to maintain sufficient food supply, protect the agriculture sector, and mitigate the possible losses.

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